by finding common ground with the otherside.ronaldreagandidit with a democratic house after a resounding second term victory. as did bill clinton with the republican controlled house and republican controlled senate after a more resounding second term victory then president obama. both examples, both of them, illustrate the rare opportunity that divided government presents. president obama can follow suit or he can take the extremist view that both reagan and clinton rejected by founding his nose at the other side and insisting that if republicans are not willing to do things his way he will not do anything at all. if the president is serious, he will follow the lead of president reagan and clinton. if he is really serious, he will put the campaign rhetoric aside, propose a realistic resolution that can pass a republican controlled house and a divided senate, and work to get it done. if the president acts in this spirit, i have no doubt he will have the support of his own party and a willing partner in hours. the american people will criticize of relief knowing not only that we have avoi

that divided government sometimes has done very important things for the country. thinkofronaldreaganandtip o'neill reforming social security. ronald reagan and tip o'neill doing the last comprehensive tax reform. bill clinton and republican congress doing welfare reform and balancing the budget. we look forward to making this divided government productive for the american people. and we have, of course, as everyone well knows, a lot of challenges here at the end of the year. i'll be meeting with the president and the other leadership on friday to talk about the way forward. and we look forward to being a part of the solution to these significant problems. it's my plesh shoe now to turn to our newly elected whip, senator john cornyn of texas. >> thanks, mitch. it's an honor to be elected by my colleagues to serve as the whip. the assistant leader on the republican side. as leader mcconnell said, we have a lot of very difficult work to do, but we are committed to working with our colleagues across the aisle to solving the nation's urgent problems. we know what those are in the lame d

of the money here, but to be the big problems have been the trade agreements, startingwithronaldreagan, theoutsourcing of our jobs. there are a lot of people trying to live and $10 an hour while they are getting social security, medicare, taking out of their money, and then they are told by people like paul ryan and mitt romney that that is an entitlement. to me, that is like more of a ponzi scheme if they take that away. getting back to the elephant in the room, until we start talking about structurally change in this country beyond fighting over taxes -- you can fight over moving around the chairs on the titanic, but what really needs to be done is we need to repeal the trade agreement, look at taxing goods from china, and we need to get jobs back into this country, manufacturing jobs with wages people can live on and pressure for wages to go up. right now, the pressure is for wages to go down. you are fighting over what is less of the money coming in. host: let's go to the congressman. guest: this is an important issue that was fought over in the campaign. we need to support manufa